Climate Disinformation on TikTok in Brazil: Science and Epistemic Authorities in Conflict

Record highs in the Earth’s average temperature and the recurrent occurrence of extreme events have made climate change a central focus of international organisations’ and governments’ agendas worldwide. The epistemic crisis in science, together with the rise of individual belief systems, raises concerns about the spread of climate disinformation, particularly in a context where social networking platforms increasingly mediate everyday life. This article analyses the meanings conveyed in disinformation-based content about climate change published on TikTok to identify which actors, technical resources, and discursive strategies are mobilised to reinforce narratives on the topic. To this end, methodological procedures drawn from content analysis are employed to examine disinformation-based material randomly selected on TikTok using the keywords “climate change”, “climate changes” and “global warming”. A total of 207 videos were analysed. The results indicate a high percentage (71%) of cropped or decontextualised materials on TikTok that rely on scientific or journalistic arguments to disseminate factoids about climate change. Paradoxically, the main vectors of disinformation are science professionals or journalists (34%), whose scientific capital is mobilised in videos to disinform, whether intentionally or unintentionally, by the protagonist. These results thus suggest that science is being instrumentalised and scientists are being mobilised to promote an informational disorder based on exaggerations about climate change and its consequences, requiring equally complex collective actions to mitigate these effects.